|
|
| Indonesia |  Review on August 13, 2019: |
Fathonis84
Rating:  | Review Topic: K1 Visa
My fiance had his interview at the US Embassy in Jakarta on September 13, 2019. He was very nervous but said he was treated very courteously. Normally the K-1 Visa interview takes about 10-15 minutes, but his took much longer, perhaps due to our somewhat unusual situation. For in-person customer service and the overall interview process, based off of his assessment, I would give them 4-5 stars.
That being said however, I find the process leading to an interview in Indonesia to be very convoluted and improperly explained. Customer service in this arena is poor, if you can reach someone to give you customer service in the first place. While understanding our situation was somewhat out of the norm, I feel some training needs to be conducted on how to handle various situations. Regardless of our situation, the process drastically needs improvement. The directions from the multitude of official websites you are lead to during this process (NVC.gov, CEAC, CGIFederal, and the embassy consular website) all give conflicting information on what to do once a case is sent to the embassy. One site says to schedule your medical appointment once an interview date is received, there is no mention of receiving "packet 3" and "packet 4", the embassy says a medical appointment must be completed before the interview can be scheduled, and round and round we go. This merry-go-round of misinformation cost me and my fiance a very unnecessary amount of time in what is already a very protracted process, which could have easily have been avoided with proper and clear directions from official websites and embassy staff.
Embassy staff in the Immigrant Visa section of the Consular's office could use some further training and what the regulations actually are (particularly in regards to who can and cannot file for immigrant/non-immigrant visas through the Consulate). Furthermore, trying to reach someone by telephone is virtually impossible. While the embassy website lists a contact number for the Immigrant Section of the Consulate, this number is not valid, and you must go through a seemingly endless switchboard of people just to get connected to this section, which most of the time is not available to answer calls (we were told the hours of operation were from 9-11 am). This is unacceptable. For this reason, I would give the way the embassy handles the entire process a 1-2.
For both of these reasons, I will only give the embassy an average rating. To restate, in-person customer service is great, but otherwise, this embassy seems woefully inadequate to properly field questions or understand their own regulations.
All this being said, the Visa was finally approved and this leg of the journey if finally at an end. Best of luck to anyone navigating this process in Indonesia. I am happy to share my experience in further detail should you find yourself in need of some advice.
| |
|
Consulate / USCIS Member Review #26857